Leprous – Bilateral (2011) [InsideOut Music]

Avant-Garde Metal at its best, I must say! I got hooked on these guys about a year ago searching on progarchives and these guys are for sure extremely original with each album they have put out.

Bilateral is hands down their best album to date even though it is only their third release, these guys are very much unbelievable Progressive music lovers and the first thing you will hear stick out with this album is the crazy fucking amount of Frank-Zappa influence, and the epic progressive traits in the Avant-Guard style you know and love ! The opening track Bilateral, once you have listened to that track you can get a little sample of that the whole album is like in some what of a nutshell. There is also some light hearted indie rock and some post rock influences on the album as well which at times remind me of Modes Mouse right before they get into the more hard rock/metal moments when they come about. Also if you have not ever listen to this band you will soon hear the very same vocal tone of Johnathan Davis of Korn in the singers voice and also at times I.C. Vortex for instance when you listen to the first track in the first opening 8 seconds you will know what I mean or if you just listen to the album or any of their past efforts. There is some 7 string guitar parts in there but they are not the death metal temelo picking blazing around on that 7 string riffs NO the riffs they use on the 7 strings do play around on the 7^th string but they more used in the way of like something you might hear in a hard rock band except on Waste of Air they do get pretty progressive death metal like.

The overall atmosphere and feel of the album is pretty progressive but yet very kind of artsy when I listened to this band and this record alone I always kind of pictured listening to it in a caffe shop at times at least for a lot of the keyboard atmosphere parts and the post rock parts. Also I would like to point out that the key board parts remind me a lot of the late Opeth style and the other all feel of the playing of them in some of those softer songs kind of like taking acid and listening to a Pink Floyd album. Come to think of it on Bilateral this is a pretty balanced album though there is more slower parts on this album unlike the previous two records which were pretty heavy. Ihsahn did some guest vocals on this album as well and produced the album the other you get into this album you will be able to tell that this does sound like a Ihsahn produced album with production quality and other things. I would like to point out that the members of Leprous are Ihsahns fill in band for when he plays live with his solo project and upon listening there is no doubt he made a good choice in picking these guys because the musicianship very tight the flow of the band is very organic but still have has some technical characteristics there playing.

I think with this album they can reach out to people who are fans of non metal music. I do think this is their best record to date and I can´t stop listening to it ! It is pretty impressive stuff these guys are really original and their music should have no problem winning you over.

-Bjørn